Weapon firing events create optical flashes known as muzzle flashes. Muzzle flashes are incandescent flashes at the weapons muzzle caused by the ignition, the expulsion of burning powder grains and the expansion of powder gasses.
Various techniques have been developed to detect flashes. For example, optical techniques involving spectral or multi-spectral imaging have been proposed. These techniques are generally implemented by an optical system involving a focal plane array (FPA) with tens of thousands of pixels in order to limit a background influence on flash detection. Furthermore, since muzzle flashes are generally short duration events, a read out rate (sampling rate) of the focal plane array needs to be driven at high frequencies. This results in high data rates from the focal plane array and raises challenges with respect to computational and cooling requirements of such detection equipment. These challenges are even more severe when the readout rate of the focal plane array is further increased to enable analysis of temporal features of the muzzle flashes.